sewing stuff from scratch is a pain in the ass. also, it’s not as cheap as you might think. even low-quality fabric is expensive; it’s almost always cheaper to buy finished clothing than to buy the bolts of fabric to make your own, so once you factor in the time, frustration, and risk of failure in DIY clothing, it’s tough to find a compelling reason to sew your own stuff. unless you need an utterly perfect custom fit, but even then, it’s cheaper and easier to buy something close and then alter it.
so. jedi costumes. i got it all worked out. i’m impressed with myself, which means you now get to sit through all the details!
the twits keep changing their minds as to which jedi they each want to be, but fair enough… there’s basically a “generic black jedi costume” and a “generic brown jedi costume,” and since we own every color and hilt-shape of lightsaber ever made, i really don’t have to draw any lines in the sand, save “no shaving of heads and blackface.” so, the costume goals:
there are several websites that have jedi costumes – for $20, you can get some really cheap crap that’ll last through about two washings. for $120, you can get some pretty deluxe outfits… not including the costume boots (with raised heels and slippery soles, PERFECT for kids wearing long robes in the dark on a halloween sugar high!) and gloves. screw those. equally unattractive option: buying 20 yards of fabric for about the same price and spending 30 hours trying not to fuck it up. next option, a trip to goodwill, isn’t quite going to cut it, because it’d be nice if all the blacks were the same shade of black, and all the browns the same shade of brown.
i finally remembered the existence of american apparel, which is known for simple clothes – clean lines, no ornamentation, no logos, and they use the exact same 17 colors over and over again. scary models, some butt-ugly clothes, but the discount pricing from various amazon sellers makes them jedi supply central!
so, the base outfits, in childrens’ size six, with some boots that were on sale at amazon and will double as plain ol’ snowboots:
then, for the tan tunic, i got a men’s size S cardigan, which should hit the boy at the knees. all i have to do is take off the buttons, shorten the sleeves and make them narrower at the armpit, tapering to wider at the ends, leave the front wide to overlap, and what i have to take out to make the torso narrower in the back will become the sash.
for the brown robes, behold the ugly-ass unisex poncho! get a size M, take off the front pocket, cut it down the front, make the sleeves shorter and bell-shaped, and we have a drapey cape thingy with a ginormous hood!
the poncho didn’t come in black, but the women’s hoody-dress in california fleece did! size L, and we’re set. so, between the dress and the cap-sleeve brown shirt, each boy gets one women’s garment as part of their costume, making their shame equal.
and, while i was ordering all this crap, the twits were disgruntled over the fact that they had no white pants or shirts to their name, so some american apparel plus the cheapest damned women’s slippers i could find at amazon is their new stormtrooper/clonetrooper outfit, to go with the clone trooper voice-changing helmet that was on sale at target last week, ending years of tenuously-civilized turn-taking with the darth vader voice-changing helmet and black cape:
of course, getting the best prices on stuff required ordering from several different sellers, so only about a third of the stuff has showed up so far. so we’re improvising a bit:
EvilGremlin is not into star wars. at all. in fact, i had the following conversation with him last week:
me: hey, wanna watch a movie you’ve never seen before? this is called “the last starfighter.”
EG: nah.
me: why not?
EG: because I hate anything with the word star in it.
me: What?
EG: like STAR wars, STAR trek, battleSTAR galactica. The last STARfighter? I hate it.
i think it’s time for a maternity test on that one.
but anyway, he does like indiana jones, so here’s one of his improvised costumes:
now, MonkeyBeef may not know squat about star wars or indiana jones, but he is big on lightsabers and whips. i can generally keep them away from him, but he figured out how to twist his blankie up into a whip and likes to careen around the room terrorizing his brothers with it. so, he is banned from dressing as indiana jones as far as i’m concerned. he can be a star wars character. i almost bought him an r2d2 costume:
unfortunately, there are two problems. the first is that i seriously doubt the “one size fits all” hat is going to fit on his head. the second? well, why spend $17 when he can borrow a t-shirt from his big brothers, and a 2-kellogs-boxtops-plus-shipping snackbowl from the cupboard, which i already know fits his head:
because free is good, and toddlers don’t know funny-lookin when they see it. this is a kid who walked around with a mullet for a good 24 hours (before i figured out he’d happily hold still and let me finish his haircut if he could see what was going on in the mirror) and his stupid little ass didn’t have enough sense to be ashamed of it. see? i’m a GOOD mommy! that’s $17 i can spend on… well, video games or something.
